Into the Ordinary: The Divine in the Everyday

​ Spring 2016! By the time you read these words, you may have planted tomatoes and peppers, mowed the lawn numerous times, watched bluebirds nesting in houses scattered around back yard edges. A bluebird is pure mystery, the sky come to earth.

​ In Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity and Hope, John O’Donohue describes the color blue this way:

Distance and light often conspire to create unexpected beauty. … Distance loves blue.. . . Blue is a strange colour. It holds night and day within in.

During the Middle Ages blue became art’s predominant color, replacing the color red for the West.I never knew that. Not too many weeks ago, during Lent, my husband and I appreciated a wonderful day at Transformations exploring the heartening wisdom of Celtic tradition informed by the late John O’Donohue. Singing, listening together to the beauty of wise, compassionate and loving words, all our muscles, once tired from the heavy lifting of life, felt renewed. Grace it seems holds all colors in its hands.

We need grace to live in a world as hard, brittle, and brutal as it has ever been. Some have gone so far as to call our times the new Middle Ages. From that time of plagues, wars, cruelty, and want a new flowering of art, knowledge and learning emerged. Despite all human grasping, God says, “Here is my grace. Receive it. Share it. Watch it grow!”

Miraculous multiplication figures grace. God’s Word opened the eyes of all hearts. When they looked around they knew the mystery called grace as bread and fish! Grace looked like that person across from them, even the little kid with sticky fingers! Grace appeared to all — face to face, eye to eye, hand to hand. The Word became flesh. Demanding electronic gadgets cannot accomplish this.

In spring take a break . . . leave the gadgets alone one day a week. Take a walk. Strike up a conversation with a stranger. Buy them a coffee. Give thanks for grace, a now and forever blessing.